


I Fear No Evil

by ProwlingThunder



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Into Darkness - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crew as Family, Gen, Movie scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:05:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is <i>nothing</i> he will not do for his people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Fear No Evil

After the young Captain and his Vulcan first mate left, Khan expected only one thing: to be let be.  
  
Captain Kirk was not an unintelligent man. Certainly he was brash and a little feral with hurt, but Khan had seen him clearly before he Warped away from the meeting of Captains and their First Mates. Smart enough to take out a ship with just a single rifle and improvised tools on hand, and with a loyalty to his crew that Khan could respect.  
  
The truth would weigh heavily on him. As the truth had weighed heavily on him before, and now buoyed him beyond measure.  
  
_Seventy two_. He had no proof to believe they were his. None except circumstance and poetic justice, which was the sort of thing that Admiral Marcus would have enjoyed. It was a very specific number. An exact number. The good old Admiral had figured out that he was storing them to move, so it was foolish to think he hadn't figured out how Khan had been going to _find them again_.  
  
He'd always known he was playing a delicate game with the Admiral, with his people in the balance. It was the one thing he couldn't afford to lose, and yet, the only thing the man had been able to hold over him to ensure his obedience.  
  
He had tested that leash as far as he dared in the beginning, as precisely as he could with the risk so great. He knew he had been watched. He was Khan, the Admiral's wild tiger in a cage, with a muzzle named John Harrison. It was not that he had miscalculated; he had not. If he had miscalculated, none of them would have made it out.  
  
But his plan... it had not survived the test of it's durability. He had not had the correct plan for dealing with all that Marcus had at his disposal, and he'd had no plan at all for dealing with _Captain Kirk_. The man was a wild card he had to play carefully or not at all. And did he dare, when the lives of his crew were on the line?  
  
_Marcus will come. How much time I have depends entirely on how far he was able to press the ship's completion._ Marcus was made of money. Khan had his doubts about how long it had taken him to finish after he had made his escape. Still, he would bleed red when the Augment had him beneath a boot heel. And he would. There was nowhere in the universe Marcus could run that Khan would not be able to find him. There was no one _in_ the universe that Marcus could send after him that Khan could not survive.  
  
He had been built for wars. For destruction, for massacres. Whatever history books claimed of him now, Khan was sure that the reason the Augments had been made was not lost. Marcus had made that abundantly clear when he had woken him. Augments were tools beyond all else, as the humans had once claimed them to be.  
  
He would die a free man before he lived once more as a slave. He would see all his people dead before forcing them to suffer that humiliation again. But he would see _all the humans dead_ before they _dared_ take one more Augmented's life.  
  
But seventy two...  
  
_If I could wake even one of them, the warp core could be fixed already and we could be well on our way._ He had no desire to go back to earth to face a farce of a trial, but neither did he want to be a sitting duck so close to a veritable war zone. Admiral Marcus had dared to tip his hand, and he had played his own last, desperate gambit. If Marcus wanted a war, Khan would see it brought to his doorstep. He had planned to meet with the now happily deceased Klingon scouting party. He had known they would be there. He would give them the secrets to destroy his enemies for him. It was only just retribution.  
  
Then again, Tiberius' boy. If he was Tiberius' boy. Khan was willing to bet he was; he had Tiberius' rough edges, the face and the body that was Augmented bred true. He was willing to bet women of all sources clamored over themselves for Captain Kirk's attentions. Some men, too. Humans always, _always_ found them ridiculously desirable. He'd never had that much trouble keeping his own subjects' attentions. And it was no surprise that anyone of Tiberius' blood would make _Captain_.  
  
Still, planning what he would do was difficult. He doubted Tiberius himself would have managed it. Then again, how many of them had been able to plan for _Tiberius_? Honestly?  
  
Khan did not have a plan. He barely had a card. And what kind of card he held, he could not say. Either it would go his way for the whole thing, or it would backfire on him spectacularly.  
  
There had been others in the crew who might have fared better. Khan had been designed to lead, that was true, but there were others who would have been able to calculate strategies around Marcus so thoroughly it never would have come to this. If he could wake _them..._  
  
Right. That would require getting out of this cell, off the brig, down to the bays. Pulling his crew out one at a time, hunting for the doctors and the strategists he would need to pull it off. Even Augmented, breaking out of the _Enterprise_ 's brig was a little beyond his abilities even at his best. The beating from Captain Kirk should have barely stung, but as it stood his jaw still hurt. Either he had inherited a lot more of Tiberius' strength than he or Star Fleet even knew, or Khan was still recuperating from his captivity.  
  
He did not like the implication that he was running sub-par. The exertion on Kronos had only been one enemy squad; even a year of inaction should not have made him so lax. The cryotube? No. He had been sluggish with cold, for a time, but that had passed. Perhaps it was the year of inaction, a year of not being allowed to stretch to his full potential. Oh, how he wanted to be amongst his own people again.  
  
Or at least someone who wouldn't shatter. He thought he could break Kirk, but not easily. Tiberius had been a tank on the battlefield, built to withstand all that could be thrown at him, his bone density was ridiculous and his pain threshold was right up there with it.  
  
But Kirk was a Captain, a lordling in his own right, and he rightfully did not trust Khan. He was still growing into himself, still a little unsure where his footing was. Admiral Marcus was an authority figure he trusted, and Khan was shaking it down to it's very core. Kirk had faith in the system imposed by Star Fleet, and Khan was breathing proof it was corrupt in it's base. Even if he did not admit it consciously, Khan knew the human brain well enough to know a part of him already knew the truth. He may never _accept_ it, certainly not in the way Khan was now intimately familiar with, but he knew. Khan had seen it in his eyes.  
  
So there would be no friendly matches with Kirk. Which was a pity. He had _missed_ Tiberius when they had been forced to flee. Khan's population would have hidden him; Tiberius had been well loved amongst the people, more than most of them, and they would not have wished to see him die any more than the rest of Khan's family. But if Tiberius had been amongst those seventy-two, instead of determinedly holding a rearguard with the _humans_ of his empire, Khan hesitated to say any of them would have made it.  
  
It had been the best choice. Khan didn't have to like it. And it still would not help him decide Captain Kirk's most likely course of action.  
  
But Kirk cared for his crew the way Khan did, or that jab would never have stuck true. If nothing else, he would open one of his torpedoes, see one of his men or women inside. And then he would come back for answers. Beyond that? He wasn't really sure.  
  
He would have to wait and see.


End file.
